


In Which a New Holiday is Prevented and 300 Years are Very Long

by Asidian



Series: In Which an Unlikely Friendship Comes to Be [2]
Category: Journey into Mystery, Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Angst, Bullying, Community: rotg_kink, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Exclusion, Friendship, Gen, Isolation, Kid Loki, Loneliness, Mischief
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-07
Updated: 2012-12-07
Packaged: 2017-11-20 13:09:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/585686
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Asidian/pseuds/Asidian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The spirit of winter does not mind the state of disrepair in Loki’s tower.</p><p>When first they ascend, Jack spins in circles like a child taking in the sky during the grandest of sunsets. The walls, the ceiling, the pallet upon the floor: he has praise for them all.</p><p>Loki’s intuition is that the boy makes mock of him, of this place that is all he can call his own. The stab of betrayal is small but sharp, until Jack admits that, before this day, he has not been invited inside. It is new for him, the whole of it; it is marvelous to him, for he has known nothing else.</p><p>Wariness loosens its hold upon Loki’s heart, and there is something softer to take its place. In the wake of the revelation, Jack’s enthusiasm is suddenly, wretchedly, understandable.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Which a New Holiday is Prevented and 300 Years are Very Long

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the ROTG kink meme: “What kind of trouble can the best trickster in the Nine Realms and a troublemaking, invisible winter guardian stir up?” I can’t seem to stop writing for this. ._.
> 
> EDIT: Ashldkgjdflk the amazingly talented artist beanclam drew art for this series! :D

* * *

Loki’s feet are dry once more, and his shoes are safely back upon them. He has rolled his leggings down, and as the sun reaches the tip of its progress, he finds himself away from the walls of Asgardia and the mounds of snowballs that lie atop them. Instead, he walks the streets of Broxton, and beside him is the boy that comes with the wind.

This is a small town, and the amount of people on the streets at midday is scarcely imposing. Yet there are enough to confirm what he has deduced —  what the boy has admitted. This creature of winter, this Midgardian legend, is invisible to them.

None glance toward the one who calls himself Jack Frost, though he makes more spectacle by far than Loki does, white of hair and pale of limb, bare-footed in the dead of winter. He stands upon the ice as though he does not feel the cold; where the end of his staff trails, frost blooms like new vines in the spring, curling outward, delicate and intricate and effortless.  Not one of the Midgardians, prone though they are to too-loose tongues, take notice.

The boy himself, Loki finds, is glib and excitable, quick to speak and quicker to laugh. Jack takes pleasure in small things; with animated eyes and expressive mouth, his feelings show upon his face as plainly as do words upon the pages of a book. He clusters near, close but never quite touching, and it is evident that he revels in the attention, in the words addressed to him.

Loki has not known such earnestness before. He deals in intrigues, gets his way by trickery, and this is something else entirely. He has never encountered this honest, awkward appreciation for his company, and he finds that it balms something he had not known was injured.

“Behold,” Loki tells him, as at last they come to the Diner of Bills. “Within is the most delectable of treats.” He grasps the door and pulls it wide – makes certain to hold it long enough to allow Jack to slip past him. “Frozen to perfection, and sweeter than whole hives of honey.”

He smiles charmingly for the old woman eating sausages at the table near the door, and he takes in the look upon her face. She suspects, if Loki is any judge of expression, that he has taken leave of his senses. She suspects that he speaks to himself, a game of the sort young children play with friends they have imagined. The smile widens as he realizes how the scene must look through her eyes.

“Shaved ice?” Jack is guessing. “Ice cream?”

Loki raises a single finger and wags it, as though scolding a child. “A milkshake,” he says, but he marks the words that the other boy has ventured. In time, he swears that he will taste these, as well.

It is not long before their prize arrives: two of creations of sugar and cold, both chocolate. To the eyes of the other patrons, Loki drinks them both. Jack sits beside him on the bench of padded plastic, sipping the one that is not at Loki’s lips, and he chatters on as though this day is the best he has ever known.

When he has finished, they switch cups and Loki pretends to drink the other, as well.

“Mark my words,” says the old woman as they’re leaving, “you’ll make yourself sick with all that chocolate, sonny.” Loki smiles at her again and thanks her for her concern. He ignores that Jack is laughing for just long enough to open the door and step out into brisk, bright daylight, whereupon he discovers that he seems to be, as well.

===

They walk the streets of Broxton, and Loki learns how it is that an invisible boy spends his days. He is an innocent bystander as hats are blown from heads, as stuffy, well-dressed men and women slip and slide, landing like Midgard’s slow, shelled creatures upon their backs on the ice.

He is shown how to make a snow angel and, while he is trying it himself, asks whether the pattern is based upon Gabriel or Aziraphale, or if there are others he does not know by name. The winter spirit laughs at him again, but it is not a mocking sort of laugh, for Loki knows that kind very well.

“I’ve never met either,” Jack confides, when Loki has come to his feet once more and brushed the snow from his clothing. “But I guess that doesn’t mean they’re not out there.”

They sit atop the post office and drop snowballs no larger than the size of their thumbnails upon the heads of passersby. When the irritated target glances up to find the source, Loki ducks so that he remains out of sight – and the first time, he hisses a demand that Jack do the same.

The boy is bewildered, insists that those below cannot see him anyway, but the little god of mischief is adamant. Sneaking is sneaking, visible or not, and it must be done properly.

Thereafter, the spirit of winter lies flat with him against the rooftop, snickering into the snow.

===

They circle back toward Asgardia as the sun draws low in the sky, and it is Loki that spots the trouble first. He knows their faces, these boys – they are the ones who so kindly sought him out to give him presents this past Yuletide, a veritable array of blows with which to celebrate the happiest of days. “Fortune of fortunes,” says the little god of mischief brightly. “A newly-invented holiday is on the horizon.” Jack turns a quizzical glance his way, but Loki is a consummate liar, the grin on his lips more flippancy than unease.

Perhaps he has given away more than he intended, however – for as the youth of Asgardia close the distance, circling like the great winged birds that eat corpses upon this world, their feet slide out from under them. The gusting wind and the slick ice have conspired at just the right moment, and the spill is quite a nasty one, a chaos of flailing limbs and startled shouts.

The nearest boy’s legs splay out wide – come too near – and for an instant, Loki is certain that one of them, at the least, will have bruises to show for this day. The limb is on path to catch Jack across the shin, but when it reaches its destination, its carries on through as though the boy were not there at all.

He does not miss the way Jack’s face shutters. He can not mistake how the boy steps back from the place where the contact ought to have been.

“Come on,” says Jack, and takes the opportunity to turn, hiding his expression. “You want to wait for them to get up?” This bringer of winter, thinks Loki, has not the art of telling lies.

But he is right all the same – and so they run. Their footsteps are a pair of echoes up and down the stately passageways, and when their pursuers come too close, the melting snow atop a particularly steep rooftop sloughs downward with a  _whump_ , half-burying the largest of the boys.

“Not bad, huh?” says Jack. When he glances back to catch Loki’s eye the melancholy has gone, replaced with a crooked grin.

===

The spirit of winter does not mind the state of disrepair in Loki’s tower.

When first they ascend, Jack spins in circles like a child taking in the sky during the grandest of sunsets. The walls, the ceiling, the pallet upon the floor: he has praise for them all.

Loki’s intuition is that the boy makes mock of him, of this place that is all he can call his own. The stab of betrayal is small but sharp, until Jack admits that, before this day, he has not been invited inside. It is new for him, the whole of it; it is marvelous to him, for he has known nothing else.

Wariness loosens its hold upon Loki’s heart, and there is something softer to take its place. In the wake of the revelation, Jack’s enthusiasm is suddenly, wretchedly, understandable.

And so the little god of mischief makes a tour of it – for though the tower is not large, it is Jack’s first invitation anywhere, and he will have a proper showing, with all that it entails.

Loki presents each in turn with all the glamour of a showman: the most magnificent dog in the world, who does not realize a guest has arrived. His tomes, yellowed with age but still well-tended. The jerked beef in plastic that Loki has stashed behind a stone in the wall, quickly divvied up and consumed. Ikol is not about for introductions, but his other half is boring at the best of times and malicious at the worst, and conniving all the space between, so perhaps that is for the best.

When the tour is complete, they sit in the place where the wall has crumbled away, looking out at the darkened world to welcome the rising moon. As it appears white and watchful above the ruins of old Asgard, its light illuminates the grateful smile upon his companion’s lips, and Loki finds himself thinking that three hundred years is a very long time. He recalls the way Jack has hovered near him all the hours of this day, close but not quite touching. He recalls the eyes that have passed over the boy unseeing, the touch that was not felt.

And quite deliberately, he leans against the boy that comes with the wind, side against side, head upon his shoulder.

Loki feels the startled jerk of surprise – feels the sudden tension that comes with contact. He cannot see Jack’s face, not from here, but he thinks that perhaps the careful shifting is a failed attempt not to press nearer.

“Shall I tell you of the time-honored Midgardian tradition of sleeping over?” Loki says into the silence. “It involves the popping of corn.” When Jack wavers at last, relaxing against him, the little god of mischief knows that he has won.

===

Loki wakes in the night to discover a hand upon his own, fingers clasped tight about his fingers, palm to his palm. For an instant, half asleep, he supposes he has been injured, and that his brother is seeing to him as he recovers – but Thor’s hand is much larger by far, and is not chill to the touch as this one is.

He blinks himself awake to the sight of Jack asleep on the spare pallet spread out beside his own. The boy has somehow managed to capture his hand and hold to it as he slumbers, as though afraid that it will not be there when he wakes.

In the moonlight, this creature of legend is pale as the dead, smoothed of laughter. Loki can feel the cold radiating off of him, but it is not an unpleasant sensation. Loki most assuredly knows the cold. Without intending it, the little god of mischief finds himself wondering what it would be like to spend three hundred years alone. What it would be like to spend three hundred years living in this tower, with all of Asgardia to hate him.

“Did you truly have need of two?” says a voice, and Loki glances up to see that his other self has returned. The magpie is perched in the corner of the room, upon the outcropping of a shattered beam. Its beady eyes, inscrutable as always, are fixed upon the pallets lying side by side on the floor.

“Don’t be a nuisance,” Loki instructs, voice thick with sleep. “It isn’t as though one of them was yours.”

“Very well.” Ikol draws up its small form in the way of irate birds, feathers ruffled in offense. “But I forbid you to complain when you have twice the laundry.”

The magpie takes off in a flurry of motion and black feathers, disappearing through the window. Loki watches after it for a moment longer, and he wonders at this impulse to keep secrets from himself.

It is not until Jack shifts in his sleep and sighs, murmuring indistinct words, that Loki recalls half the night yet remains. And so, gingerly enough to preserve the careful hold upon his hand, the little god of mischief settles down to sleep once more.


End file.
